The Northwich Business Improvement District (BID) may have only just received a Silver Gilt in the 2019 North West in Bloom awards but activities have already begun for next year.
Working in partnership with Grozone Community Garden, planting has been taking place at various locations across Northwich since the beginning of December as part of a new initiative called ‘Brighten up your community.’
The aim of the project is to add colour to the Northwich community by planting spring bulbs, which will bring vibrancy and an eye-catching element to areas of the town from spring next year.
All of the bulbs planted are organic, which means they have not been treated with any pesticides so are especially pollinator friendly as they contain no harmful chemicals.
Stephanie Leese, Business Team Co-ordinator at Northwich BID, has explained more about what has been planted and where.
“So far, planting has taken place with volunteers at Castle Community Centre where we planted up crocus, tulips, grape hyacinth, alliums and a mixture of other spring plants and we have also created a tulip bed full of 250 tulip bulbs that were planted by the elderly residents at Queen Elizabeth House in Northwich.
“On top of this, school children from Kingsmead Primary School helped plant 1500 organic crocus bulbs at the Barons Quay River Garden, which will create a whole bank of colour next spring. Northwich Rotary and Northwich Vale Royal Rotary Club members were in attendance to help dig the holes for the bulbs and they brought along hundreds of additional purple crocus bulbs to tie in with their Purple4Polio scheme – raising awareness of the Rotary campaign for a Polio free world.”
Planting also took place at Grozone Community Garden, with Senior Grozone Development Officer Caroline Rose commenting: “We have planted around 300 bulbs at Grozone with about 100 more to go in. They have included crocus, alliums, grape hyacinth, lily of the valley, snakes head fritillary, daffodils and caerulea. These are great for pollinators and will flower in succession so we will have beautiful prolonged colour and flowers.
“They were planted by a combination of my under-fives toddler groups and my regular volunteers where around ten people have helped put the bulbs in ready for spring colours.
“We are really excited to have had the chance to brighten our community garden with bulbs and are really grateful to the Northwich BID for supplying them, especially such environmentally friendly stock.”
Going forward, more sites and locations will be planted up as the scheme progresses to bring even more colour to areas of Northwich.
Follow the Visit Northwich Facebook page for future updates on Northwich’s In Bloom entry.
